Close House, in Northumberland and one of the UK's most charming golf resorts, has combined the traditions of the golfing game with modern, state-of-the-art GPS technology to provide golfers with the best in 'championship course' experience.

Thanks to a new fleet of 30 electric Club Car Precedent i2 Excel vehicles fitted with hi-tech Visage GPS technology, visitors to Close House can enjoy the newly opened Colt and recently refurbished Filly courses in all their splendour.

"The user-friendly 10-inch touch-screens on the new Club Car golf cars provide state-of-the-art hole graphics, 3D movie flyovers and detailed distance-to-green information that are proving very popular with our golfers already," commented General Manager of Golf at Close House Hotel and Golf, John Glendinning, who is very pleased with the instant success the new fleet is having with his visitors.

"With the opening of our new Colt course, named after the English golf course architect, Harry Colt - responsible for Wentworth, Sunningdale and Stoke Park - and No.19, our new clubhouse, we wanted to preserve the high standards of our offerings by always providing our golfers with the best golfing experience possible," he said.

"Given the nature of our hilly parkland courses, many people like using golf cars to play their rounds," he continued. "So we wanted to invest in a reliable fleet that would provide our visitors with unique functionalities and added value to their games."

Close House compared the key golf-car providers in the market and quickly realised that pricing was not going to be the deciding factor here - but the Visage GPS system that featured on the Club Car vehicles.

"Visage is the best GPS system there is on the market," commented John. "There is no other system that works as well as Visage does, providing beneficial, user-friendly capabilities to both users and course operators. It is definitely a deal-clincher.

"From our part, the fact that Visage enables us to keep the golf cars on their designated virtual paths, especially in wet weather conditions, control down-hill speeds and pace of play, as well as keep track of the position of the different vehicles that our out on the course thanks to a map-based computer application," he added. "The system's functionality has enabled us to see immediate impacts on our costs and on course management.

"The new Club Car fleet has eradicated the need for buggy paths through the rough," John continued. "This means that there are no disruptions to the natural landscape and the design of the courses.

"Since the implementation of the new golf cars, our course managers, greenkeepers and marshals have received no end of compliments - which of course has made everyone here at Close House proud of our achievements in what has been a relatively short golfing history, and also underlined the fact that this investment was the right one."

In addition, the state-of-the-art Visage technology provides golfers with user-friendly food ordering capabilities, on course leader-board and scoring features - all of which Close House visitors are familiarising themselves with.

On the golf operator side, the system also gives course managers a huge amount of new benefits, including being able to stop/slow down golf cars going into restricted zones, keeping golf cars away from/off protected grasses or GUR (ground under repair), knowing battery diagnostics of each golf-car to ensure proper rotation and full battery life usage, as well as enabling security lock-downs when golf cars are parked to prevent misuse.